Author: sudhagee

… later, I complete a decade of writing this blog. A DECADE ! There is a sense of disbelief mixed with pride as I type this out — the annual blog anniversary post where I record the blogging year that was, sum up the highlights, rant a bit, rave a bit, reflect a bit, with hopes and share plans for the year to come…

For those who came in late, let me summarise this blogging journey in brief. “My Favourite Things” began on this day 10 years ago when I hit the publish button on a post about Mumbai’s Bandra Fort. It was supposed to be a travel blog, at least that was the plan. But my blog had a mind of its own and soon I was blogging about movie and book reviews, social issues, and also writing on a lot of miscellaneous topics. Basically, it was a lot of that and this, which kind of worked as my blog URL for a long time was That And This In Mumbai.

I experimented with topics and genres to discover what worked for me — travel, books, art, museums, music — and what didn’t — food and restaurant reviews, product reviews, movie reviews, among others. The external blogging world also impacted my choices for the blog’s content: I flirted briefly with writing sponsored posts and collaborations, but found out that they made me very uncomfortable, and dropped them with great relief. In other words, my blogging journey was also about persevering in what I liked and letting go of what I didn’t like.

The 10 years of blogging have been challenging, particularly in the last few years. I have been publishing lesser number of posts with every passing year. I published only 10 posts in Year 10, but there was a big difference this time around.

The visit to Istanbul’s Archaeological Museums was the highlight of my trip to there in October 2019. The Istanbul Archaeological Museums is made up of three units — the Istanbul Archaeological Musuem, the Ancient Orient Museum and Tiled Kiosk Museum — and together exhibit over a million artifacts. I could have easily spent a couple of days at the Istanbul Archaeological Museums, but time was a constraint and I could explore for just a couple of hours. I was in a daze for most of the visit as the exhibits were about civilisations and cultures I had only heard of and had read about; this was the first time I was getting to see their material remains.

One of the most impressive set of exhibits that I saw were some sarcophagi from the Royal Necropolis at Sidon (present day Lebanon, then part of the Ottoman Empire). These were excavated in the late 19th century and then transported to Istanbul. Though each sarcopagus was different and interesting in its own way, one of them stood out me for the emotions it evoked. Even seven months after my visit to the Istanbul Archaeological Museums, the one exhibit that has immediate recall is the Sarcophagus of the Mourning Women and the subject of this post.

Do you ever have a song, an idea, a story line, or an image stuck in your head? And it just refuses to go away? For some time at least? I have this with music — it could be a song, an instrumental piece, a jingle, a background score, etc. That particular piece of music becomes my “now’” song, and the “nowness” (pardon my English here) could remain with me for any length of time.

My current favorite piece of music — “Like a Winter’s Dream” sung by Kwak Jin Won — is quite different from what I usually listen to. It’s in Korean (a language I don’t know), and sung by a singer I had never heard of before. But that didn’t stop me from falling in love with the music for the emotions it evokes is something I can understand and identify with. Do listen to the song and the English translation of the beautiful lyrics before you proceed to read the rest of the post.

There is a black door in my office that I usually use as a chalk board to keep track of schedules, upcoming projects, etc. at work. But in the last few weeks, it has turned into a board that lists words, terms and phrases I have come across while editing or reading documents as part of work, or have been contributed by colleagues. All these words, terms and phrases are new to me and while I understand some (or at least I think I do !), most have left me baffled. For example, “affordance”, “unlived experience”, “hedonistic sustainability”, “unstickiness of pedagogical structures”, among many others.

Every morning, when I arrive at work, I look at this ever-growing list. I puzzle over the words, brood over them, look them up in the dictionary to make sense of them. Sometimes, I discuss these words with colleagues in an attempt to understand them. Sometimes, I try using them in sentences to see if they work. And sometimes, I give up on them.

Postcards from…is a series about one picture perfect capture from a place I have recently travelled to. I am just back from a short monsoon holiday to the southern Indian state of Karnataka and the postcard is from one of the most picturesque and atmospheric places that I visited during this trip — ruins of the Rosary Church at Shettyhalli.

This Church was built by French missionaries in the 1860s. This was abandoned in 1960 when the Hemavathi dam was built and the reservoir created partially submerged the church when the water levels rose during the monsoons. The monsoons had not fully set in when I visited, so was able to see and walk around the ruins of the Rosary Church.

We don’t always have to travel to seek stories; they are right there in our homes too. In “Stories From My Home“, I examine the many objects surrounding me at home and attempt to document and share the memories associated with them, one story at a time.

I wasn’t surprised at what my Appa wanted. He was crazy about the railways, trains, engines and everything associated with them. He loved watching the animated series on Thomas the Tank Engine and I used to love watching him watch the series on TV and giggle away.

So that’s what I got for Appa when I returned from London in 2009 after a year-long stay — a small model of Thomas and a book with illustrations of all the engines and characters in the series. I got him other things too, but once he saw Thomas, nothing else mattered. The look of delight on Appa’s face when I gave it to him is something that I will never forget.